


Sightless eyes and unhearing ears.

by Madoking



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: I don't quite know how to describe it, Kassandra is searching Hades, Poetry, and musing of those lost, prose, words without plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:02:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23679589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madoking/pseuds/Madoking
Summary: Kassandra has just been released to Hades after two-thousand years of solitary wandering, and she tries to comprehend her life.
Relationships: Alexios & Kassandra (Assassin's Creed), Brasidas/Kassandra (Assassin's Creed)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 34





	Sightless eyes and unhearing ears.

The sky laced with stars, pricking  
the dead of night and shining in the way  
only stars can. Knowingly. Deadly  
on their course through the sky. 

Telling her the way to tread, west.  
Into the depths of Hades. Where the  
souls screamed and the echoes sang.  
She was alone here.

As she was everywhere. No hands touched.  
No warmth or memory reminded her.  
She was Lethe: both forgetful  
and forgotten. But souls called, anyway. 

Brasidas, in his baritone. The  
song of his triumph, the songs of  
his deeds, filling her ears and giving her  
no peace, no joy, just bitterness. 

Alexios, in his bass. Words rolling  
off his tongue and into the abyss  
where he made the world whole: untouched,  
unblemished, unkind. 

Myrrine, her endearments still ringing.  
Pet, Lamb, Love, Dear. Each a name,  
each a calling to her children lost. The  
sum of her words, and so much more. 

Nikolaos, the wolf clashing. His sword  
at her hip and his pride in her mind.  
Even as the call of his condemnation  
stilled her hand. 

And others, searching, singing,  
forever singing out to her and holding  
her to account for her crimes.  
_Misthios. Misthios. Misthios._

“Misthios?” the merchants had asked, arms  
forward and deferential. It was her only name,  
then. 

“Yes?” she had answered, eyes greying.  
The sun was unkind, just as she had been.  
Ignoring the voices that called to her,  
through her, for her blood. Not revenge. 

But questions. Asking whether the blood that  
still sat under her fingertips and lingered  
in the base of her scalp was worth the  
coin she so greedily sought. 

_No_ , she’d answer. It wasn’t worth  
the loss. But how do you explain that to a  
man who has lost his soul to blood?  
How did she explain?

Brasidas, the Strategos. His hair  
earthy and bright, a beacon. He’d  
burst to her, giving no heed to his injurious  
blade as he claimed the warehouse. 

He’d been taller than her, inexplicably.  
With a scar across his right eye and  
a mouth that could cool Thera. Laughing,  
always laughing within the mouthed questions. 

He always surprised her, a feeling she missed.  
A small lift of his lips before he said some  
awfully, truthfully, predictably absurd falsehood.  
Never at her expense, always seeking her laugh. 

The answer to every question she’d ever had.  
The questions had only mounted since. 

She could still picture the thrust, silencing  
his mouth forever. Letting his blood run,  
his thoughts escape, his essence disappear  
into the earth and into the dirt cracks. 

He deserved more. He deserved everything.  
And she’d delivered him a simple killing  
blow.  
She was unable to stop her brother, refusing. 

One soul for another. One love for another.  
Wasn’t that the bargain of the universe?  
The dreaded deal, the haggle, the agreement.  
Her brother, whole. Her lover, dead. 

But that wasn’t the only deal. She’d  
made them throughout her time. Buying, selling,  
borrowing,  
stealing. 

Brasidas was her most daring heist of all.  
His laugh, captured by her ears.  
His wit, seized by her mind.  
His heart, held in her fist. 

That was why he died, after all. He’d  
refused to take her brother from her. A theft.  
The worst kind, because it wasn’t a choice  
she’d make, ever, now or since. 

She forgave him. But she would have  
chosen her Strategos, her General,  
her largest love. The answer to every question.  
Now unanswered. 

A shameful, uncomfortable thought.  
But a thought all the same. Asking for a lover  
was different from condemning a brother.  
But she would have chosen Brasidas, then. 

Alexios had lived, and she refused to  
let her bitterness interrupt the peace she’d bought.  
Always bartering, contracting, transacting.  
Brasidas had paid for her brother, so she loved him. 

And she did love him, no matter how  
he’d returned to her. Without his blade, he  
may not have been who he was. He might have lost  
his softness, his shine, his light. 

Or, he might have lost his brutality, his  
savagery, his ferocity. He might have never survived,  
he might have thrived, instead. Been like their  
Father, a wolf without a pack. 

Alexios was her mirrored edge, compacted.  
He knew her mind, just as he knew her blade.  
Like calls for like.  
Known calls for the unknown to be knowable. 

The remembering eventually dulled. Soon enough  
Alexios brought not the reminder of blood spilt,  
but rather of the times inbetween. 

The time he’d become lost in the forest.  
The time he’d attempted to bake burnt bread.  
The time he’d removed a wasp from her hair.  
The time he’d laughed, so warmly, at a joke. 

The times inbetween. When it was simple.  
When her brother wasn’t simply  
the blood he’d spilt. The lives taken.  
He was more, beyond even them. 

Men are the sum of their actions,  
but he’d been more. He’d escaped the fog  
and forged his own narrative, bereft of  
the torture that had dogged his beginning. 

“They made me slay a friend, once,” he’d said.  
She’d stilled then, her broth not quite making it to  
her mouth. He’d continued, as if she’d not reacted.  
“His name was Leon.”

Leon. _The Lion._ Lions were rarely,  
if ever,  
killed by wolves. But Alexios? He’d managed.  
A friend. 

“He’d been told that he was a sacrifice to Hera,  
Queen of the Gods, as if  
she would deign to notice a small boy with  
his teeth out of line and his hair thin. 

“He’d been told. But still, his eyes saw betrayal  
once my hand found the spear. I couldn’t spare him.  
But I know better, now. They wouldn’t have killed me  
in his stead, as I wished. No.

“They needed me more than I needed them.”

She knew it was true. He was more than they  
had made him and more than he saw of himself.  
Even with his scars, his sometimes cruel sneer,  
his tendency to throw a table when dealt a poor hand. 

He was simply _more_.

She loved him. She’d loved him since he was small.  
A bundle, simply wrapped, kicking out his legs. 

But he was more than even that. 

She couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t love him.  
Except, of course, when his spear had done  
more than she could have humanly coped with.  
But, even then…

His life was worth more to her than even her own.  
She’d watched him slip away, fever across his brow  
and loving words on his lips. An old man. A promise.  
Painless, no longer tortured. 

Yes. She could hear his singing. She could.  
Among the souls tearing at her, his was the  
one she sought. 

She was old. She had seen too much. And relief,  
sweet relief, had eluded her for too long.  
But Atlantis was no longer her concern.  
The world was no longer her concern. 

So she didn’t seek Brasidas, her lover.  
She didn’t seek Myrrine, her mother.  
She didn’t seek Nikolaos, her father. 

She sought him, her honey-eyed brother.  
The mirror to her soul and the whisper  
of understanding between them, only them. 

“Kassandra?” he whispered, his shade dark with years.  
“Alexios,” she replied, a shadow of a smile.  
She’d been old. But, in the end,  
Taratrus had claimed neither of them.

**Author's Note:**

> This was super experimental and thank you for reading it. I write a lot of this type of stuff and insert it into narratives, but I'd not written one so long before, or one that sits on its own.
> 
> Like my work? Donate to the NSW/ACT Aboriginal Legal Service!  
> https://www.alsnswact.org.au/donate


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